Archive for Domino

IBM today announced IBM Notes & Domino 10, coming in the second half of 2018, along with a strategic partnership with HCL to develop the release, along with the following products: IBM Notes and Domino IBM SmartCloud Notes IBM Notes Traveler IBM Mobile Connect IBM Verse IBM Mail Support for Microsoft Outlook (IMSMO) IBM WISPR IBM Enterprise Integrator (LEI) IBM Sametime portfolio IBM Connections Chat/Meetings IBM Client Access (ICAA) This does not cover IBM Connections, the 'Pink' release, and IBM Watson Workspace. It seems the Cisco and Box relationships stay within IBM as well, but I did not confirm that. There will be a 'jam' for all of those who want to participate in what the Notes & Domino 10 release looks like, including influencing the road map. RSVP for the Jam here. My thoughts: I am excited to see new life and attention put into the products and a new major release coming next year. But reality sets in and you realize that to get that life and attention, IBM had

Kathy will be presenting AD109 - Making the Shift - From Notes Dev to Web Dev with Angular and Node on Thursday, August 10, 2017 at 10:00 AM EDT in Beech Room at MWLUG 2017. Here is the session abstract: In this session, Kathy will take an XPages/Domino application and create the same app with Angular and Node. She will show you how to build the application, but she’ll also discuss the differences between the two. While you can port many of the skills you’ve learned for XPages, there are shifts that need to be made to get those skills to work with Angular and Node. Kathy will discuss differences in architecture and design between Notes/Domino and Angular/Node. Kathy will discuss IDEs and how they differ from Designer. She will cover pitfalls and how to overcome them to help you make the shift from a Notes developer to a modern web developer. See you there! Remember to bring your PSC ad from the conference guide to get stamped for a chance to win an Amazon Echo Show!

The second in a series of demonstration videos, my coworker Ken Lamey shows our IBM/Lotus Notes to Quickbase migration services that PSC Group, LLC provides. Please enjoy the video - and feel free to contact me directly if you are interested in services like this with Quickbase! You can reach me at jhead@psclistens.com.

There has been a bunch of chatter about IBM Bluemix and why it should be a consideration as a platform for any current Notes & Domino and XPages customers. Most of those are focused on the technology side - such as Mark's posts and Notesin9 - or about the upcoming support for Domino & XPages that IBM discussed at IBM ConnectED. All of that is very cool stuff. What excites me most is what it means in terms of building applications and getting customers excited. The sales process for Bluemix is very new and I am still finding ways to talk about it with customers. For me, having an application development platform is not a selling point. Being able to produce great applications that solve problems with new deployment options is a selling point. So my partner-in-crime Andrew Barickman put together a demo that I believe really will help me in my sales conversations. Below is one of our XPages demonstration applications called Pursuit Tracker Here is Pursuit Tracker running o

As a follow-up to the "Collaborative and business applications for the connected company" white paper I posted earlier this month, IBM has published a follow-up white paper that focuses specifically on application modernization with Notes and Domino applications to XPages. John Roling and I teamed up on this to cover application modernization methodology and a customer story that highlights the power of XPages. You can download it here.

PSC at IBM ConnectED 2015 PSC will be presenting the following sessions at IBM ConnectED 2015 – we hope to see you at one of them! Speaker Title Abstract Date/Time Location Mark Roden BTE102: The Future of Web Development - Write Once, Run Everywhere with AngularJS and Domino AngularJS is currently the most popular JavaScript MVC framework. It's driving more adoption and interest in the MVC/ REST API application architecture model. The ease of use, portability and re-usability of the code makes it an ideal solution for modern web developer needs. We'll show you how to use AngularJS to modernize your existing Domino apps, while leveraging Domino's best features. The speakers will also demonstrate how the power of architecting a solution based on AngularJS allows your Domino application to be made available through other platform interfaces. Taking "Write once, run everywhere” in the literal sense, you will see the same Angular/ Domino based app running natively in XPages, IBM Conne

PSC is proud to have five people selected as IBM ICS Champions for 2015. This is the second year in a row that PSC has the most ICS Champions of any organization worldwide. In celebration of this achievement, PSC is offering the opportunity to win a free week of consulting, including travel costs, from one of our IBM Champions. More information and nomination form can be found at https://contest.psclistens.com Congratulations to the team - Kathy, Brad, Mark, and Andrew!

I co-authored an IBM Whitepaper titled "Collaborative and business applications for the connected company" and it is available for download today. Here is the description: This paper outlines the continued application development value of refreshed platforms like IBM Domino and IBM XPages technology, while also looking at how they take advantage of newer innovations, including: IBM Worklight Platform, IBM Connections and its open APIs, cloud innovations and more. It's a good overview on the application development options in the IBM collaboration software stack. I wrote it with a few great IBM Authors that are not named (but you know them). It's the first of two whitepapers. This one is more general. The second one, coming later this month, will cover application modernization at a deeper level. It will also include a detailed customer vision from one of my good friends and colleges - John Roling. More on that in a few weeks. I am also proud that IBM agreed to dedicate this white

It's been talked about before, but Ray Ozzie's tweets share a great a story about Lotus Notes and it's 25th anniversary. I know Mat did a blog post, but I thought a slide format would be best to read them. Feel free to share, use, download, etc. Happy Birthday Lotus Notes - again!

Hard to believe that Lotus Notes was officially released 25 years ago today. Now, we can trace the birth of Lotus Notes back to University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana (Go Illini), but as far as the official product - today is that day. Hard to believe the product is 25 years old and still around. Most of those 1.0 applications still work in the current 9.0.1 product - which is just another testament to what an amazing product Notes is. Thanks for the career Lotus Notes. Thanks for friends and coworkers and much more.

The results are in. You can access them at this page: http://www.psclistens.com/ibm-survey-results.aspx The results are interesting and can be interpreted in many ways. I will save some personal thoughts on it until people can consume the information, Infographic: http://www.slideshare.net/PSCGroup/pscs-ibm-notes-domino-survey-results-2014 Presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/PSCGroup/notes-domino-survey-results-2014 Thanks to everyone who contributed!

Have you ever wondered what other companies plan on doing with IBM Domino? Now is your chance to find out. PSC has committed to collecting feedback from Domino users worldwide, and sharing the results of this survey back to the community. Please take 30 seconds to answer the questions below and share this URL via social media. The more responses gathered, the more valuable this information is. Let’s work together to capture the big picture view of where companies see Domino in their future. The poll will run until October 3rd, 2014. We will release the results on October 6th at http://www.psclistens.com/ibm-survey-results.aspx - or you can enter your email in the survey to get them emailed. We are not doing this to gather anyone's info for solicitation. This is about trying to get a handle on active use and strategy around the IBM Notes & Domino products. We plan to share the data with the community so we can all have access to the numbers. You can access the survey at http:/

IBM has the first public webinar around IBM Mail Next since unveiling it at IBM Connect this past January. I thought I would highlight a few thoughts and questions I have. (before I go on, IBM did say this was a point in time and nothing was set in stone and everything was subject to change. So keep that in mind as you continue reading please) The webinar was mostly high level about the process, but we did see two specific 'demos' (more on that later) around the calendar timeline and faceted search. First, I think the design concepts shown by Scott detailed that IBM is trying to do more than build a new web email client. There is real innovation being attempted. I see that innovation in the flat list of attachments and links from the search results. I loved that. I want that right now. We also got an updated detailed architecture slide: This slides confirms that IBM Mail Next is being targeted at web / cloud deployments first. Yes, you can see Domino in there - prominently. But

The XPages community has had an active two weeks of discussions, kicked off by my coworker Mark Roden's post Why learning JavaScript is more critical to XPage developers than Java. This inspired many comments and other posts and videos. The best of those were: Tim Tripcony - "Do I Need to Learn Java?": a brief conversation with a composite character Mark Roden - When the community comes together we get the right answer Steven Wissel - Learning a new language or platform Jeff Byrd - Life without xPages # 3 – a little more JAVA please I think David Leedy's Notesin9 was brilliant and hilarious. If you have not watched this, you should. NotesIn9 141: Java vs JavaScript Throwdown. Mark also responded appropriately (And the gloves are off…… and An open letter to Mr. NotesIn9). I have been reading and watching on the sideline. I no longer write code, so the technical discussion going on here is something I don't feel like I should provide an opinion. Mark, Tim, David and many more are muc

Attached is the presentation that John Beck of IBM and I gave at IamLUG 2013 yesterday: http://www.slideshare.net/johnhead/whats-next-application-modernization-roadmap-for-socializing-ibm-notes-and-domino Some organizations neglect or under-utilize one of the greatest IT assets in their portfolio - the line of business application. Most were built 10+ years ago with no Web, mobile, or social. This session describes the application revolution taking place, covering the options and best practices required for success. Migration and new development will be compared and contrasted. Real-world data will demonstrate the positive potential return on investment. We will discuss PSC's Application Modernization Center and how it helps move customers from merely maintaining Notes applications to increasing their value with XPages. If your organization is considering a migration or an XPages solution for your Notes/Domino investments, this session is for you! For those of you that have seen

Last night while chatting about the IBM Connect 2013 conference and some after thoughts, a discussion came up with a person (they can reveal themselves if they want too) about how they probably had to move their email from a on-premises Notes/Domino solution to something else. They didn't want to maintain a Domino server any more. That led into a question on why IBM hasn't made SmartCloud easy for a single person or small company to order with a credit card. I know I spent 18 months talking about this with IBM executives, so I went and looked. First, the Lotuslive.com URL still works, but the new direct URL is IBMCloud.com/social. That takes you to this page: Notice the red box. Click that and you get taken to a page to pick your country and language. I haven't tried this for any country but the US and UK, but I believe this works in most countries. Next, you get this page: Look at all those options. 5 bucks a month for email and you can add Traveler and Archive Essentials. The

The above thought has been on my mind since the middle of December but I have not figured out how to blog about it until recently. Let's start with a public comment from Ed Brill's blog: 14 Erik Brooks | 1/26/2012 11:46:38 AM @Ed - I actually *did* know. I'd still like to hear the reasons why this direction was chosen, because it's eyebrow-raising. My apologies to Erik (didn't go out of my way to call you out Mr. Brooks, your comment was just the easiest one to find) but this is exactly what I mean when I ask 'Why does the Domino community have a "Domino or nothing" mentality? First off, I get why people love Domino so much. Hell, I am one of those people. It's easy to install, easy to administer, and in basic use is easy to maintain. You can ramp Domino up to enterprise levels with clustering and lots of other great features. You can turn on DAOS and get incredible results of disk saving. You can install Traveler, which folks like Andrew Pollack call one of the best Domino featur

By now most of my readers have read the deluge of IBM Lotus Notes & Domino 8.5.3 news. For those that have not, here is a bit of a recap: Ed Brill: Introducing IBM XWork Server IBM Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5.3 now available, including entitlement to IBM Connections Files and Profiles New license terms in Notes/Domino 8.5.3, including changes to Domino Express Some great new ibm.com resources for Notes/Domino 8.5.3 Niklas covers My Favorite Domino 8.5.3 XPages Features very well. My thoughts: XPages: 8.5.3 is the release you want to get on if you are doing XPages development. If you have done work in 8.5.1 and 8.5.2, yes, you will feel some pain getting your existing apps there. But 8.5.3 is going to become the foundation of all the roll up of features that we have seen on OpenNTF.org and on the blogs. When the extension library and mobile controls get implemented in the product vs. a download from OpenNTF.org, 8.5.3 is going to be the platform you need to be on. I also feel li

The Integration Story started in 1994, with the first ways to combine Lotus Notes and Lotus Ami Pro to create custom applications. In 2011, the Integration story is still going strong. This session will start with the basics and ramp up in skill and capabilities. We will show how to integrate Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino, XPages, and LotusLive applications with the tools on your user's machines: Microsoft Office, Microsoft .NET custom applications, OpenOffice.org , LibreOffice, Lotus Symphony, and more. We will look how the ODF and OOXML standards are changing the integration story and how they will impact you. You will walk out of the session with lots of sample code and extending your own integration story! MWLUG 2011: The Never Ending Integration Story View more presentations from John Head

Speaker: John Head - PSC Group, LLC, Director of Enterprise Collaboration, David Via - IBM Corporation, BUE, WW Messaging and Collaboration Sales Some organizations are neglecting or under-utilizing one of the greatest IT assets in their portfolio today - the Notes/Domino application platform. Some are even considering re-coding Domino applications in other languages and development tools. In this session we present the business case and technical merits of Notes and Domino in direct comparison to other tools such as Microsoft SharePoint. Based on data collected from real-world engagements we will demonstrate the positive return on investment of the Notes platform. We will also discuss PSC's "Application Modernization" strategy and how it helps move customers from merely maintaining Notes applications to increasing their value with XPages and advanced collaboration functionality. MWLUG 2011: Notes/Domino Application Development Competitive Advantage View more presentations from J

This is the integration session I gave at IamLUG 2011 IamLUG 2011: The Never Ending Integration Story: How to Integrate Your Lotus Notes, Domino, and LotusLive applications with Microsoft Office, .NET, and Lotus SymphonyView more presentations from John Head. "The Integration Story started in 1994, with the first ways to combine Lotus Notes and Lotus Ami Pro to create custom applications. In 2011, the Integration story is still going strong. This session will start with the basics and ramp up in skill and capabilities. We will show how to integrate Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino, XPages, and LotusLive applications with the tools on your user’s machines: Microsoft Office, Microsoft .NET custom applications, OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice, Lotus Symphony, and more. We will look how the ODF and OOXML standards are changing the integration story and how they will impact you. You will walk out of the session with lots of sample code and extending your own integration story!"

This is the session that David Via and I gave this morning at IamLUG 2011 The Notes/Domino Application Development Competitive Advantage - IamLUGView more presentations from John Head. "Some organizations are neglecting or under-utilizing one of the greatest IT assets in their portfolio today - the Notes/Domino application platform. Some are even considering re-coding Domino applications in other languages and development tools. In this session we present the business case and technical merits of Notes and Domino in direct comparison to other tools such as Microsoft SharePoint. Based on data collected from real-world engagements we will demonstrate the positive return on investment of the Notes platform. We will also discuss PSC’s “Application Modernization” strategy and how it helps move customers from merely maintaining Notes applications to increasing their value with XPages and advanced collaboration functionality."

Notes/Domino Application Development Competitive Advantage - UKLUG 2011 Edition View more presentations from John Head This is the presentation that Ted Stanton and I gave yesterday at UKLUG. It is an updated version of the session that David Via and I gave at BLUG. Thanks for the comments and feedback on the session. Seems like everyone enjoys that way we designed this - to get the IBM vision and then a partner practical experience back to back. If anyone has a user group where they would like this presentation to be presented, please contact me. David and I are planning on presenting this in the American Midwest at least once this summer.

PSC Group, LLC is again looking for consultants to hire. We are looking to hire people with any of the following skillsets: 1. IBM Lotus Notes Developers who can develop Notes and traditional Domino Web Applications 2. XPages Developers 3. Administration skills with Domino, Sametime, Connections, Traveler, and other IBM Lotus products We are also looking for developers who have SharePoint, .NET, and Java skills. These are full time positions in the Chicagoland area. If you are interested, please contact me and I will get you to the proper person. Please note: We are only looking for candidates in the US. You must have legal status to work here. Ideally, we are looking for people in Chicago.

Ed has continued the discussion about Domino Designer on Eclipse.org (DDE) on a Mac today. He talks about how he is convinced it needs to be done, but asks at what cost? What gets left off the to-do list in place? There is some chatter about server work vs. DDE Mac. While I have never been part of the IBM triage process for deciding what goes in a release, from what I have heard, observed, and been told, there is usually a bucket for server, client, and DDE/Development. So I am going to go with the assumption that DDE for Mac and Domino Server improvements are different groups and won't compete with each other for resources. So while I talked about DDE for Mac last week, I must say to all those at IBM listening, I would give up any further DDE platform support for RDBMS support. Allowing XPages to connect directly to JDBC or other third-party relational systems would be a major boon for the platform. XPages has the ability to become the middleware development platform for collaboratio

So there seems to be a meme today for the Lotus bubble to ask IBM to make Domino Designer on Eclipse (DDE) work on the Apple Mac OS. I have no horse in this fight, but a few thoughts. 1. Be exact in what you are asking for Are you really asking for DDE to come to the Mac OS? The entire thing? Or are you OK with an XPages only IDE for the Mac? Think long and hard about what your asking for and be very specific. Being too generic and broad in the request will likely prevent this from happening. Why? Because DDE or Designer didn't come to any platform in a single release given all the current features. Create a DDE on Mac 1.0 feature and requirement list. Can you live with English only on an English only Mac OS release? Only the latest 10.X instead of support for all current supported Mac OS versions? Be surgical in what your willing to have come in a later version. 2. Do you really know what it takes for DDE to come to the Mac? Has anyone done the work to figure out what the effort e

One of the major announcements from IBM this week is that in 2011, IBM will add support for hosted Domino applications to the LotusLive. Ed blogged about the announcement that was covered in the OGS and his session this afternoon. Let's cover some highlights: Public or Private Access 3 Licensing models: free developer or test deployments, bring-your-own-license or pay-as-you-go licensing for production deployments. Flexibility to have pay-as-you-go licensing in as little as hourly increments Amazon's Elasticompute will get updated with updated images, credit car payment options and improved activation IBM Lotus Domino Utility Server for LotusLive with support for the IBM Cloud and Amazon I think it is important to notice that the mention of hosted apps is on the IBM Cloud, not LotusLive servers. While Notes client will have single sign-on because of the PKI, it will be interesting to see that if web applications launch with SSO or we need to wait for a SAML implementation. I think t

So watching the reactions of people to Ed's announcement that Domino Express was going to get clustering as part of the entitlement has been interesting. I think IBM adding clustering to the Express offering is great, but also agree that the Directory Assistance should not be withheld from the Express entitlement. It is a no brainer and I hope it gets added in the short term. Ed's second post about this brings even more discussion, but really focuses on the thought around applications access on the web. Express does not allow external authenticated or anonymous web access to Domino applications. The Utility Express Domino license covers this. Utility Express is not cheap nor expensive - US$2700 for 100 PVUs. But should IBM really be charging for something like a blog, running the IBM blog template, on a server? I think there are two ways to solve this problem. The first is that IBM make the following to the IBM Domino Collaboration Express entitlement: 1. Allow DA for all Domino

Tri-State LUG is happening October 11th, 2010 at 590 Madison Avenue in New York City at the IBM conference center. A great lineup of speakers; Alistair Rennie is giving the keynote. Kevin Cavanaugh is giving the Collaboration Roadmap session (Ed usually does this, but it will be very interesting to see Kevin's perspective - great to hear from the top boss here). Other amazing speakers in our community, and myself. I am doing the following session: Kumbaya Meets Let's Kick Butt: The Integration of IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino with Microsoft Office, .NET, and IBM Lotus Symphony Welcome to 2010, where Lotus Notes and Domino are just part of your corporate toolset. This session will introduce you to integration of Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 with Microsoft Office, .NET technologies, OpenOffice.org, & Lotus Symphony. We'll start with the basics and build up to mail merge, exporting to a spreadsheet, charting, presentations, and integration on the Web. Advanced topics such as Vi

IBM announced that Singapore Airlines has selected IBM Lotus Notes and Domino over the competition. The official press release: Singapore Airlines Strengthens Global Communications with IBM Software ARMONK, N.Y...September 23, 2010...IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that it has signed an agreement with Singapore Airlines to empower the airline's geographically distributed workforce to collaborate and communicate more effectively. After a comprehensive total cost of ownership study that evaluated the merits of IBM Lotus software versus the competition, Singapore Airlines decided to expand its collaboration initiatives with IBM software. As part of the new undertaking, Singapore Airlines will upgrade to the latest version of Lotus Notes Domino 8.5 by the end of 2010, and will further enhance its collaboration, knowledge management and mobility using IBM social software. "Enterprise collaboration and communications is critical for a company whose employees are as dispersed as S

Last week, IBM announced LotusLive Notes, the cloud (hosted) version of IBM Notes & Domino. I didn't have time to blog about it last week, so here is a reply of what took place. First, Ed announced LotusLive Notes. You can also read the IBM press release for IBM LotusLive Notes and IBM Lotus Notes & Domino 8.5.2. Both are coming August 24th, 2010. Then, reporting from a blogger conference call, Tom, Peter, John Roling, and Nathan wrote their thoughts and impressions - and some questions - about the announcements. Nathan wrote about how this really is just the Lotus Domino we all know and love - and why tha tis a good thing. So I can share now, I have been participating in the LotusLive Notes beta. But to highlight how 'real Domino' this really is - I just added a new location to 8.5.2 CD5 and created a connection document to the LotusLive Notes servers. Everything else worked just like Notes. I added the LotusLive community to Sametime - and that was up and running immediate

User Group season is upon us and I am pleased to be speaking at the second installment of IamLUG. I have two sessions. The first is an hour version of the two hour Lotusphere 2010 jumpstart entitled “Kum Bah Yah” Meets “Let's Kick Butt”: The Integration of IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino with Microsoft Office, .NET, and IBM Lotus Symphony: Welcome to 2010, where Lotus Notes and Domino are just part of your corporate toolset. This session will introduce you to integration of Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 with Microsoft Office, .NET technologies, OpenOffice.org, & Lotus Symphony. We'll start with the basics and build up to mail merge, exporting to a spreadsheet, charting, presentations, and integration on the Web. Advanced topics such as Visual Studio Tools for Office, advanced development with C#, and integration with Lotus Domino Web Services are included. Integration with Xpages, Google Docs, Sharepoint, ODF, OOXML, and Windows Explorer will highlight the options available. Ev

I swear, it's coming "Real Soon Now" ... Version 1.0 is just in final testing. And here is a preview of some of the features: Version 1.0 will be released here this week. I promise! :-) We won't be submitting this release to the catalog, we want to get some of the "Coming Soon" features done first.

Many of you who read this blog or any of the other IBM blogs that PSC hosts noticed that since Sunday evening, the blog server was very slow. Sometimes not reachable at all. Since fixing it last night, I figured I would pass along a few thoughts on how others can prevent this problem. 1. If you are using the Domino Blog template from IBM, please make sure you have the Anti Spam Check? Option turned to YES The mix-and-mash blog did not have this turned on ... and had gotten over 250,000 comments in about 36 hours. They were from different IP addresses, but this was causing the HTTP server task to pretty much die 2. I figured out that the mix-and-mash blog was the issue specifically because Luis found out that a blog entry from 2008 on that blog was open in HTTP threads a lot ... like over 10,000 active connections. This must have been how the botnet software was keeping the connection to the server and passing the information along to the different machines that were auto-generatin

So like many of the other bloggers in the Lotus Community, I was asked to check out the new "IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1" book from Packt Publishing. I got thru the book today and here are a few thoughts on it. First and foremost, the book is designed to be an overview of the product and an update on what is new. In many ways, it feels like the content you would get from a super duper "What's New in Notes" help file or something from Lotus Education to take the new certifications. I do not think that is a bad thing. If you were expecting a really detailed book on Xpages, this is not that book. I will get to the Xpages issue in a bit, but first - lets talk about what is good in the book. I found the chapters on the Domino Server, Deployment, Upgrading, and Coexistence to be very good, even if there are two chapters about Domino (Chapters 4 and 10) which should have been consolidated into one. I thought for anyone who was a beginner to mid level IT professional would learn someth

The pieces you care about: Domino Designer is now FREE for anyone - and its a pleasure to use Traveler supports iPhone mail, calendar, task, and personal address book sync XPages works locally in the Client Lots of XPages and Composite Applications (CA) fixes and enhancements Symphony toolkit with LotusScript and Java support OpenNTF.org will get a bunch of the out-of-box templates donated. You can now officially use these templates as part of your projects - and have them committed to the catalog. This includes Vince's OpenNTF.org mail experience and much more. What is your favorite feature in 8.5.1?

As many of you have read, IBM officially announced Notes and Domino 8.5.1 IBM PRESS RELEASE: For Immediate Release IBM Brings Lotus Notes and Domino Software to Full Spectrum of Web Devices No Charge Option Available to Developers for Domino Designer to Extend Domino Business Applications ARMONK, NY – October 6, 2009: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a major extension of Lotus Notes and Domino collaboration software for the full spectrum of proliferating mobile and Web-connected devices such as the Apple iPhone, Nokia smartphones, thin clients, laptops and desktops used to access corporate applications and business processes. To spur broader growth of Lotus Notes and Domino applications for the increasingly diverse range of devices in corporate use, for the first time, IBM will make Lotus Domino Designer tools available at no charge. Lotus Domino 8.5.1 is the first version to natively support the iPhone via Lotus Notes Traveler software. This extends Lotus Domino automatic synchin

First, here are the final versions of the press releases that IBM put out today: Companies Choosing Lotus Collaboration to Work Smarter and Lower Costs & 200+ Microsoft Partners Per Month Flocking to Sell IBM Lotus Foundations Second, there was an interview conference call with Caleb Bralow and Ed Brill for the Lotus Blogger program earlier today. Here are some thoughts based on that discussion: Foundations: Caleb Barlow: "Lotus Foundations is a change in business strategy in competing with Microsoft Small Business Server." Some people in the press have asked "Can IBM build a channel for the SMB market?" most of these customers have not purchased from IBM for many years New partners that are traditionally Microsoft partners More often than not, these new clients are a competitive replacement. Microsoft has created this situation, artificial licensing and platform decisions based on number of users. Relationship of buyer and seller is changing. partners moving to a

After our very successful and sold out Notes & Domino 8.5 Upgrade Workshop last week in downtown Chicago, PSC is announcing two more of these workshops. June 24th and 25th - 1051 Perimeter Drive, 9th Floor Conference Rooom, Schaumburg, IL 61073 August 25th and 26th - Chicago IBM Innovation Center, 71 S. Wacker Dr., Chicago, IL 60606 Here is a description of the workshop: Introduction Presentations and Hands-on Lab Exercises for a 1 or 2 day Proof of Technology, with materials focusing on Notes® End User, Domino® Administration, and Domino Application Development enhancements in version 8.5. (Please indicate which day or days you will attend in the Special Instructions box when you register.) Objective The Notes & Domino 8.5 Upgrade is intended to provide the customer with an in-depth examination of the new capabilities of version 8.5 of the products. For existing customers, this exploration will help them assess the additional value and potential impact to their exi

PSC is hosting a Lotus Notes & Domino 8.5 Upgrade Workshop on May 27 & 28, 2009. We only have room for 30 people and it is half full as I write this, so if your interested, sign up now! If you can't attend this one, watch my blog for more info about a similar event this summer. Overview The Notes & Domino 8.5 Upgrade is intended to provide an in-depth examination of the new capabilities of version 8.5 of the products. For existing customers, this exploration will help them assess the additional value and potential impact to their existing Notes environment. For new customers, this exploration will not only give them a hands-on experience with a product new to them but it will also reinforce the Lotus Notes advantages over the competition, such as the power of its application development platform. At the conclusion of this Proof of Technology, the participant will leave with excitement and perspective about the business problems this new version can help solve. Who Shou

Domino X Pages 8.5View more presentations from John Head. Here is the presentation that I did with Philippe Riand of IBM this morning at the GRANITE (Chicago Lotus Notes User Group) on XPages. This is a near duplicate of the presentation that Phil did at Admin / Lotus Developer 2009 last week. Instead of having Phil travel to Chicago for this, it made more sense that I presented the slides and Phil ran the demos. It worked out very well and everyone in the room seemed to enjoy the presentation - based on the great comments! It covers the following: 1. What is XPages? 2. XPages Basics 3. XPages Advanced Topics 4. XPages Futures It also has links to quite a few of the XPages demos that are available around the community. One item of note: Just as the IBM legalize states in the slides, the futures stuff is not committed too. Don't plan around that functionality until you see it in the product :-)

Some thoughts on the Lotus product line and their announcements at Lotusphere2009: Lotus Notes & Domino Lotusphere2009 was really the celebration of the 8.5 release. The OGS might have been anti-climatic since the product shipped the Jan 4th, 2009. The conference was all about 8.5, with DAOS, ID Vault, and XPages all over the sessions. We also saw LinkedIn integration coming in the client with a great sidebar app. Project Atlantic became Alloy, the joint project between SAP and IBM. We need to see more of these - official plug-ins or applications for integration or web 2.0 inclusion to the Notes & Domino product line. I was expecting more Lotus Protector announcements but those did not come, but we got the big shocker of the week - IBM was working to add ActiveSync support to Lotus Traveler in 2009. This is a big move for IBM, providing an ability to allow certain devices COUGH iphone COUGH to connect to the Domino server. It will be interesting to see how this works out

I am a bit late to the blogging about these, but I had three Lotusphere 2009 session abstracts approved! First, we have the Jumpstart that Alex and I have given the past couple years Introduction to integration of Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino with Microsoft Office, .NET, and Lotus Symphony. The session has been completely revamped with all new demos and new technology demos including the integration of Google Docs with Notes and Domino applications and some intro samples around creating OOXML and ODF documents. This session has been popular in the past with a back to back repeat pre-scheduled. That is 4 hours of integration demos Sunday afternoon in Orlando to kick off the week. If we do that again this year and you see my Sunday night at the party or eating Ed's sushi at Kimono's after, you will understand why I am punchy :-) Second, I will be giving Lotus Symphony and You - A Developer's Perspective, which is a revamped version of my Irish Lotus User's Group session with less Execut

Most of the time when I talk about Integra, I talk about the reporting and office integration with Integra for Notes and Integra Quick Reports functionality. At The View Admin 2008 / Lotus Developer 2008, Integra had a booth that I was pleased to help with. Talking with many of the administrators there, they really loved the Integra for Domino Administrators product. Integra for Domino Administrators focuses on providing pre-made reports for Domino Administrator, allowing them to anyalze and report on their Domino infrastructure inside Microsoft Excel. It allows the administrator the ability to chart performance, statistics, and provide information to others in a graphical format. Available reports include: Access Control settings – audit ACL settings of users or groups across databases. Derive effective ACL rights of users and/or groups considering the user's membership in groups including nesting of groups. Identify orphaned ACL entries in databases for users or groups no lon

I wanted to give a shout out to my co-worker at PSC, Jimmy Minata. Jimmy was accepted to the ITSO Virtual Residency for Best Practices for Building Web Applications for Domino 8! Jimmy and I have worked together for 8 years and he is a killer Notes and Domino developer. I encouraged Jimmy to submit for this, as it will be good for him, PSC, and the wiki. I am sure he will bring great experience to the Virtual Redbook. Nice job Jimmy .. and enjoy your busy March!